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Video: The Bat Cave
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Bat Crash
Bats are crucial to ecosystems—devouring insects, dispersing seeds, and pollinating flowers. But in the U.S. an insidious new enemy is causing massive die-offs.
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/01-mysterious-disease-brown-bat-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-01.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1356044
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/02-wintering-bats-hellhole-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-02.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
Fateful Sign Little brown bats wintering in a West Virginia cave called Hellhole, the state's largest hibernaculum, show the fungus that gave white-nose syndrome its name. Intimate behaviors, such as dense roosting, allow the fungus to spread.]]>
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/03-hubbards-cave-gray-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-03.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
Bat Survey To census gray bats in Hubbard's Cave, Tennessee, last winter, biologists counted individuals in small areas, then extrapolated. The estimate: 300,000 in this cluster and 513,000 in the entire cave. The fungus hasn't affected this endangered species—yet.]]>
http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1356043
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/04-dead-bats-mulch-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-04.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
Grim Evidence Greg Turner, of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and DeeAnn Reeder (at left), a biology professor at Bucknell University, find a fetid mulch of dead bats outside a coal mine in eastern Pennsylvania. "I'm not a sky is falling person," Reeder says. "But for North American bats, the sky
is
falling."]]>
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/05-examining-dead-bats-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-05.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
Assessing the Disease In a lab at Boston University, biologist Jonathan Reichard has prepared bat remains for heat processing to render away their fat. By weighing them before and after the procedure, he can determine their fat content and deduce how badly the fungus had weakened them.]]>
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/06-snow-struggles-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-06.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
Cold Killer A little brown bat in Pennsylvania struggles in the snow against the effects of untimely arousal, caused by the disease. The fungus
Geomyces destructans
may not kill bats directly, but disturbance, activity, wasted energy, and hunger in winter add up to doom.]]>
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/07-hubbards-cave-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-07.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/08-inspecting-hibernating-bat-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-08.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/09-pearson-cave-bat-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-09.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1356048
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/10-checking-white-nose-syndrome-714.jpg
/2010/12/bat-crash/img/bats-60-10.jpg
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
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